A Quarter Century of Service!

We interrupt your regularly scheduled life for this important message.

It’s been a year of tremendous celebrations, with marriage equality now the law of the land in nearly a third of the United States and in all or parts of sixteen other countries.  It’s also been a time of setbacks and tragedy, with laws either on the books or under consideration that would make LGBT people and their relationships illegal in parts of Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Caribbean.

Hi, I’m Jon Beaupre from “This Way Out” with a message to anyone who thinks it is important to get wide-ranging, carefully researched and fair-minded information about LGBT people around the planet. “This Way Out” programs in 2013 included:

=> Conversations with Russian lesbian journalist Masha Gessen and leading gay activist Nikolai Alekseev; entertainer Leslie Jordan; U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid; gay meat-packing heir/former Ambassador/philanthropist James Hormel; out “Glee” star and filmmaker Chris Colfer; now-retired openly gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson; out American opera countertenor David Daniels; venerable gay playwright/performer/activist Harvey Fierstein; trailblazing lesbian singer/songwriter Tret Fure; openly gay Bristol, England Lord Mayor Peter Main; and veteran lesbian human rights activist Urvashi Vaid.

=> Globetrotting “Sapphic Nomads” Katie Cook and Maggie Young sent us “audio postcards” from the road about LGBT life in Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan and Nepal.

=> “Queer Life & Literature” Commentator Janet Mason turned the pages of Madhavi Menon’s “Shakesqueer: A Queer Companion to the Complete Works of Shakespeare”; Ellis Avery’s “The Last Nude”; James Baldwin’s recently-reissued “Notes of a Native Son”; Julian E. Farris’ “The Sin Warriors";  and President Obama’s openly gay 2013 inaugural poet Richard Blanco’s latest collection, “Looking for the Gulf Motel”.

=> “Rainbow Minutes” profiled U.K. rights pioneer Allan Horsfall, Russian mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaya, Canadian artist Steven Walker, and Britain’s King James I.

=> We charted the development of the cases against California’s Proposition 8 and the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) at the U.S. Supreme Court, capped off by the high court’s historic pro-gay rulings in late June; we had on-scene reports from the marriage equality debate and its final passage in France, and in the U.S. state of Minnesota; coverage of Congressional hearings on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), leading up to its historic passage in the U.S. Senate; we played some of rabidly anti-gay televangelist Pat Robertson’s “greatest hits” and professional homophobe Scott Lively's outrageous assertions; witnessed the first observance of LGBT Pride month in a post-“Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” U.S. military deployed environment at Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan; passionate arguments for marriage equality in Britain’s House of Commons by MP David Lammy, in the New Zealand Parliament by MP Maurice Williamson, and in the U.S. state of Rhode Island by Senator Maryellen Goodwin; and we continue to follow the impending clash of Russia’s law banning so-called “gay propaganda” and the February 2014 Winter Olympics in the Russian seacoast city of Sochi.

=> The filmmakers behind “Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton”, “The Happy Sad”, “Out in the Dark”, “Petunia”, “The New Black”, “Kill Your Darlings”, and “Dallas Buyers Club” discussed their work and brought preview clips… and be sure to tune in the week of December 30th for award-winning entertainment reporter Steve Pride’s picks for the most compelling LGBT moving images of the year, with comments by the their makers and copious audio clips, in the 2013 edition of “Pride On Screen”.

So whether this time of the year you say “Season’s Greetings!” “Eid Mubarak!” “Maazel Tov!” “Happy Kwanza!” “God Jul!” or “Merry Christmas!” – there is no better way to give to a cause that reaches out around the planet to build a strong and informed community.

The funds we raise for our volunteer-driven nonprofit group (charitable tax deductions in the U.S.) go to production and distribution of this vital information. We are calling on you, we’re hinting, suggesting, begging, and cajoling you to do your part to keep this show going for another quarter century – yup, in April we reached 25 years of sending this program out to the world!

All it takes is a visit to our website, www.thiswayout.org. Scroll down the "A Quarter Century of Service" text to one of the Paypal links, and in just a few keystrokes, you can be a part of history in the making.

If you don’t like online transactions, you can also transmit your check or money order to our new mailing address: P.O. Box 1065, Los Angeles, CA 90078 USA.

It’s easy, it’s fast, and it’s so important.  Do your part now to keep “This Way Out” on the air everywhere!

Thanks in advance, and wishing you and yours a healthy, pleasurable, and productive 2014, we now return you to your regularly scheduled life.